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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29147319">triumphant, as each night is won</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingyournarrative/pseuds/takingyournarrative'>takingyournarrative</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>:), Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst, Blood and Gore, Cancer, Death, Fluff, Gerry is A Very Tired Human, Happy Ending, Insomnia, Kissing, M/M, Michael is Hypnos, i forgot to tag, including some philosophizing on mortality vs immortality, okay i think that's all the horrible horrible content warnings, specifically: greek mythology, yikes :(</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:48:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,495</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29147319</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingyournarrative/pseuds/takingyournarrative</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was gorgeous. Poppies, dark red and crimson, waving in thick clusters as far as he could see. Shadows that gathered like curtains in the corners of the cavern, black and cotton-grey cloudstuff. Fireflies everywhere, little lights blinking on and off and bathing the whole place in gentle flickering gold. Somewhere a river was singing. Somewhere, quieter, someone was humming.<br/>The voice was strange, strange and lovely in the way it lilted, stepping deliberately from note to note, a melody plucked out carefully on the frets of a music box, sighing away into the wash of the river and the velvet whispers of the poppies.</p><p>in which Gerry is really, really tired, and then he isn't :)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>triumphant, as each night is won</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>⚠️in case you don't read ~additional tags~ please be advised that this fic has (a) a surprising amount of blood and vague gore, and (b) a couple paragraphs of ~philosophizing about death~ (specifically mortality vs. immortality)! I marked off that section with *** on both ends, in case death discussion is A Big Nope but you still want to read! :) Take care of yourselves &lt;3</p><p>title from night lament by kate rusby, which is still my most listened to song of all time on spotify because i used to loop it while i slept.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He didn’t recognize himself. The pool was mirror-still and it should have reflected him to a fault, and maybe it still did, but he couldn’t tell. Couldn’t connect himself with the face, sinking a little in the surface of the water but distinctly pale, gaunt, shadowed under the eyes and in the hollows of its cheeks. He looked a wreck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It made sense. The days bled into one another, bloodred and shadows dripping down from one midnight to the next, and when the sun came it was shrill. His head swam with it, stuffed full of cold impersonal brightness. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t slept. When he had, his dreams had been so harsh that he had woken sick, shaking, his heart wracked against his bones and absolutely unrested. Skull split wide and stuffed with cotton, and it felt like he was decaying. A walking shambles. He hated it. The world danced arrhythmic and undulating before his eyes in the moments he could stand to have them open. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry was tired. Everything looked grey and too-bright all at once, and he didn’t know how he would find the underworld, but the land sloped downward and the grass gave way to rocks, and it didn’t seem like the kind of place that would allow itself to be found by conscious effort anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had a question that might, in the end, have been more of a demand, if he were allowed to make such things to a god.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Too bright and too loud, this gently sloping hill; too soft the grass, and he stumbled and fell and dragged himself again to his feet. When the stones came they were sharp but not slick, and it was easy enough to ignore the cuts on his hands and the bottoms of his feet. He was numb with exhaustion, or maybe pain was more of a friend than a foe at this point. It didn’t matter which; only that it didn’t hurt, or if it did it didn’t bother him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did fall asleep, once, when he stumbled and found the bruising and the weight on his eyelids too much to stand again. The dreams were stained rusty and white, something wrong and sick and long-dead clawing at his hands, breaking skin and planting itself to fester inside. It had never happened, but she had threatened it enough times to stick: the consequences of a job badly done. His hands swelled shut and tuberous veins that were not his own climbed up the insides of his arms to strangle his skeleton. He woke tearing at his skin and screaming, and lay dazed after a moment to watch the startled ravens fly away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ignoring the raw pink stripes on his arms he dragged himself again to his feet, pressed forward. There was so much to ignore. The way his fingertips were heavy, stones that had maybe once been hot with energy cold and dead under the skin. The way his eyelashes were too heavy for his eyelids to support. The way his eyelids themselves felt inadequate, paper-thin and decomposing under even such little light as the moon. The memories that haunted him as much by day as by night — Mary’s face — Mary’s voice — the sting of old scars and, worse, the recollection of what had caused them. His skull was too small. He didn’t fit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At last the ground yawned black and consuming before him. If he had had the energy, he would have shrugged, but as it was he just stumbled inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a while, there was no light, and that was nice — he could almost have slept here and had no need to go further, but the ground was still sharp, and if he managed to catch a minute of sleep it was crowded close with knives. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then there was something again, a flickering at the far end of what might have been a tunnel and might have been a hall. Faint and ghostly and he hadn’t made a plan; he didn’t know where he was or where he would arrive — only what he sought. The river was too swift to swim and too well-guarded to cross. When he got close enough to hear it rushing against its banks he felt along the wall until his hand met empty air and turned at random. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He walked with his eyes closed because it didn’t matter. Sometimes he fell and the pain jarred him awake again. There was blood on his hands — he could feel it, hot and sticky where they had been scraped open against the rocks — and he just hoped it would make him dizzy enough to sleep or keep him alert long enough to find his deity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still shut-eyed, he felt it more than anything else when he stumbled out into a place that was not the hallway. The air was warm, not oppressive like the tunnel but down-soft, stirring gently, soothing. Something flickered past his eyelids and he forced them open, blinking even in the low light of this place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was gorgeous. Poppies, dark red and crimson, waving in thick clusters as far as he could see. Shadows that gathered like curtains in the corners of the cavern, black and cotton-grey cloudstuff. Fireflies everywhere, little lights blinking on and off and bathing the whole place in gentle flickering gold. Somewhere a river was singing. Somewhere, quieter, someone was humming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The voice was strange, strange and lovely in the way it lilted, stepping deliberately from note to note, a melody plucked out carefully on the frets of a music box, sighing away into the wash of the river and the velvet whispers of the poppies. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He cast about for the source of the sound, choking back a yawn. He would not fall into his nightmares here. And there — in the center of the cavern, a black crag of stone, and at its foot, small and unassuming and radiant, a figure. Golden-haired, dull in that it did not shine, but somehow still lustrous. He was in shadow — the fireflies gave him space, flitted in and out but left a wide dark radius around him — but he was visible, illuminated without light. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the song — even from here, Gerry knew it was him. He stumbled forward like a drunk man, drunk on exhaustion maybe, or the slow tripping notes of this god’s dirge.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Michael felt quiet. He always did, really. He had built himself a pleasant home, and sleep dropped gentle from the high ceilings and dreams spun candy-soft between his fingers, and he nodded with the poppies and breathed in the last tired sighs of people drifting into his domain. He was laden with little sleepy souls and he treasured them — cared little for them, but held them gently and hummed a little and hoped it might soothe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the poppy stems were bending; someone was swaying across toward him, where nobody should be but him alone with his dreams and his nightlights and the hushed companionship of his sleepers. Somebody real and solid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Solid, at least, in the way water is solid — he looked faded, bled dry, skin that Michael could tell was already too pale save for the high fevered blush of his face, and too easily bruised, stark against the deep reds of his poppies. Dark circles drooped low under the visitor’s eyes, shadows among shadows. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was a phantom, someone Michael had not held in a long time, and he was lovely under all that day-battered bruising, and Michael wanted to take him into his arms and press sleep into him, and he was not supposed to be here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me sleep,” he said, voice rough, and he fell to his knees, crushing a cluster of poppies. There was dried blood on his hands, smudged a little across his forehead. “Please.” It sounded almost like an afterthought, but sincere, or maybe just desperate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked inches from death. To make him leave would be to surrender him entirely to his brother. To let him stay — it would be uncustomary, unfamiliar, but his eyes were somehow dull and glassy at once and his voice held as much a demand as it did a plea.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael opened his arms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He toppled into him, into the embrace of Michael who hushed him, settled his head in his lap and touched his eyes. They were damp with tears and his skin was hot. He wasn’t well. Still, Michael felt him relax, all the feverish cicada-buzz of energy draining from him, and it was a job well-done, clear in the way his face went soft, the decisive press of his eyelashes against his cheeks, the barely-perceptible fading of the flush on his face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he twitched. Stirred, racked by nightmares, and Michael understood. He’d need more, then. It was dangerous, maybe, to sink him so deeply into sleep, so far that not even dreams could touch him; but it was dangerous too to let him wake. He’d fall apart living and die mad. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So a hand, pressed to his forehead — a murmur of song. Soft hushing sounds and the river Lethe whispering harmonies against its banks. Michael drew patterns on his arms, quiet motions, almost human — the memories ran so deep it was not easy to get past them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, Michael managed. And his visitor’s breathing slowed; his body stilled itself into the untroubled rhythms of a deep sleep. Once only he shifted, turning onto his side, pressing his cheek against Michael’s crossed ankles with a sigh. He sounded content, and Michael smiled. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gerry slept for a long time, and when he blinked awake he was disoriented, still heavy with the hours he had spent unconscious. A soft weight — not like the sand-stuffed heaviness of exhaustion. He was warm and comfortable and there were little lights in the corners off his vision and a hand resting on his arm. Gentle, unassuming, comforting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello,” said the person who was holding him. “Did you rest well?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rolled over, smiled up at the blur of shadow and gold that was Sleep. “Wonderfully. Thank you.” He scrambled to sit — wondered whether he ought to stand and bow and take his leave — decided not to, and remained cross-legged, facing the god. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am Michael,” said Sleep, and Gerry smiled a little. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gerry. Thank you,” he repeated. He wasn’t certain how to behave; he was too accustomed to blasphemy to feel entirely comfortable, but he was genuinely awed and grateful. Michael was the night and the poppies and the dark-clouded cavern, and he was divine and beautiful and Gerry never wanted to leave. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you anger one of my siblings?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your dreams,” said Michael, and Gerry laughed, bitter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. My mother,” he said, without elaboration. A shadow crossed Michael’s face, but he didn’t speak. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You may go, little one. You’ve had your rest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry shook his head. There were no words to explain; nothing he could say would make Michael understand the frustration, the longing, the way this place made all of that fade away. One night, one empty dreamless rest and he was addicted to it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No?” Michael looked stunned, his voice bordering on hesitant, confused. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please … a little longer. Another — I need longer. Like that. Without the dreams. Just — just rest.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I cannot — you will sleep above.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And if I don’t?” His voice was cracking and he knew it was ridiculous, fool’s work to argue with a god, but he was desperate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael sighed, and the sound was the ocean on the rocks, heard from a distance in the dead of night. Soothing. Gerry wanted to live in it, and there were hot tears on his face before he could help it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Very well. Once more.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” mumbled Gerry, too relieved to be embarrassed by his crying. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now?” asked Michael, and Gerry nodded. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laid himself back down carefully, curled close with his head in Michael’s lap. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rest well,” whispered Sleep, and Gerry was faintly aware of thin elegant fingers tracing through his hair, and then nothing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sleep wove a crown of poppies and considered. He was worrisome, this frail-bodied mortal who wandered so desperate and so confident into his domain. Soft-faced in sleep, dark eyelashes and a lock of hair falling idle over his cheeks. Awake, he looked so tired — physically, yes, his eyes shadowed and his limbs weak — but worse, tired in the mind, in the heart. He was sun-stuffed and stitched closed with horror and Michael knew he was another sick weary soul to rock and let go back into the day, but he worried. It had always been a failing, that worry. Too much care for too many tiny rambling lives, brief as fireflies. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And yet — and yet, they were good, and beautiful, these little lights. He fretted for them, held them, tried to keep them well. They were his for a few hours and he hoped it was a relief.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry woke again, and sat up brighter than before. His lips curved easily into a smile when Michael set the crown of poppies on his head, and they were exquisite against the monotones of his hair and face. The color in his cheeks had faded from the high flush of fever to something gentler, and Michael wanted, against his better judgement, to touch it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glimmering dance of the fireflies reflected in his eyes, and he laughed, a wry gentle sound that made Michael’s heart hum, and when he spoke his voice was low and quick and blended, almost musically, with the grey murmur of the river at its banks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It struck him that he did not want to send this stranger to sleep again. Slumber was so very close to death — dreamless slumber especially, the thick silent darkness his visitor craved — and Michael hated it, suddenly, the idea of snuffing out this frantic little flame. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And still, after a while, Gerry asked again. And because it was his duty and his purpose, Michael laid a hand over his eyes and whispered a goodnight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stayed. Michael tried, halfheartedly, to suggest he might leave; after a while, he gave up and gave in to enjoying this strange desperate company. Brighter now, Gerry might certainly be, and lighter in speech and bearing, but he wasn’t happy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You sleep too often, wanderer. My brother will ask for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry only shrugged. “You make it nice. To sleep. I feel safe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>not,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” said Michael, and still part of him hated the words. Bringing sleep was his nature, his honor, his delight. It felt wrong to fear it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t care. You’re the god of sleep. What is your </span>
  <em>
    <span>point </span>
  </em>
  <span>if you can’t give me that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He snapped the words. There was a silence, and then a murmured apology, only half-sincere. Michael understood and didn’t mind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was impossible to mind Gerry. His persistence, his stubbornness, his concerning franticness. The lights in his eyes had only gotten brighter, the fog of exhaustion cleared from his skin, the air he breathed. Poppies nodded against him where he knelt in easy conversation, and the crown on his head had not faded. He was dark and soft and light and sharp-edged and Michael thought him lovely, sweeter than night air and gentler than shadows. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will let you rest, Gerry. But I refuse to deny you living in between.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then at least — at least let me forget. Let me drink from the river. I don’t want — I don’t want to see them, I don’t want to think about the — the nightmares, Michael, they're here too —”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Michael breathed in deep, because this was the hardest to justify, the strangest to explain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tried, anyway, because Gerry’s eyes were kaleidoscopic with tears and the little fires of Michael’s nightlights.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Michael said things bluntly. Gently, but bluntly. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You are built from memory, dreamless one. If I take them you will not be the same. </span>
  </em>
  <span>And he didn’t want to be the same — not really — but it frightened him, too, the idea of being somebody else. Worse still, he wanted Michael to know him, wanted the whispers in the echoless cavern and the hands in his hair to linger, remain. To love and be loved for a self that Michael said he might erase — and Michael spoke so softly, and Michael said </span>
  <em>
    <span>you are built from memory but you are not directed by them, and you might yet unhaunt yourself without erasing your ghosts entirely. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry loved him for the way he was kind and the way he worried and the way he patiently sat while Gerry lay in his lap and did not dream. He put aside thoughts of the river and when memories threatened to overwhelm, focused on the dance of the poppies, the silk of their petals between his fingers, the softness of Michael’s hands in his, the impossible shadowy light that was and was not in his face, tangled like cast-off stars in his hair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was only a matter of time before they drew closer, the respectful distance Gerry kept when he was not sleeping drawing shut, drawing him more and more often awake to Michael’s hands, his arms, the sanctuary that was the press of his body against Gerry’s, reassuring and warm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was only a matter of time before Gerry touched Michael’s face, caressed his cheek where dust clung shimmering like scattered dying stars, cupped his jaw and drifted close to drink sleep from his lips, midsummer-sweet and dizzying and intoxicating. Slow, poppy-red, breathtaking, Michael’s kisses. He tasted like dream-honey and cedar-sleep and nighttime, impossible, wonderful; he was a god, and he was nothing greater than Gerry, and he held Gerry like a lover and an equal and a friend. Soft. Soporific. Gerry kissed him as gently and as long as he could and pulled him to the floor and fell asleep tucked in his embrace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He woke happy for the first time in a long time. Finally, finally, here was someone who made it good to be awake. Michael was tracing the length of his arm and he leaned into the touch, kissed the space between Michael’s collarbones, sat up to look in his face and smile and drink in the beauty of his eyelashes, star-white, and his sleep-blushing cheeks, and the sweetness of his smile and the softness of his lips. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was lovely and for only a moment Gerry wanted never to close his eyes again if it meant he could look at Michael forever. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course he couldn’t — he grew tired easily, and more so in Michael’s home where the air tasted like poppies and every brush of a petal or a hand was laden with sleep. Quietly, Michael spoke to him, held him close and murmured until he was drunk on whispers and felt heavy, faint, nearly swooning with affection. He sank in a blur into a rest that was no longer dreamless but bright, safe, and wonderful in Michael’s arms. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There had never been anyone Michael loved to hold so much as Gerry. Truthfully, there had never been anyone solid to hold — the sleepers he gathered usually into his hands and heart were more concept than substance, the suggestions of wisps of people who rested heavy and real in the world above. This — this person who lay against him, who sank weighty in his arms as he dropped off into sleep — he was genuine, tangible, and Michael could touch him and hold him and kiss his hair and his eyes and his lips. He was good. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He liked best, still, when Gerry was awake — which still felt strange, contrary to his nature — when he would talk hushed but quick-voiced about anything and everything, tell Michael about the world above and the world in his mind and Michael was old, older than he could explain or know but Gerry said things that he had not known, and it felt so good to learn things, especially from him. There was much to say and time meant little here, and Gerry would ramble until he grew tired, or until Michael took a turn to speak or to sing, and Gerry would watch him like he was the most lovely thing he had ever set eyes on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he worried. For all his apparent understanding when Michael warned him against closing his eyes too long, he was still a mortal in a world built from Sleep. The poppies were dresses for slumber and the quiet standing stones calcified rest. Everything here was as insubstantial as a dream and Gerry bled into that falseness, eyes closed to a world that was already dark, breathing so slow it barely stirred the air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sleep was gentle but Michael’s brother was gentler still, so quiet and inevitable Michael hardly noticed him reaching himself. Their domains sat side by side and bone-white did not look so stark against the sable of Michael’s world as it should. Skeleton fingers reaching from above and below, too long, built a trellis for the poppies that arched tight over Gerry’s heart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael trusted too easily. He’d had faith that sleep was sound and there was safety in rest, and when he looked down dark roots had lodged where Gerry’s veins should be, pulsing faintly, and poppies seeped like blood from under his skin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were eating him alive. Their petals were soft and lovely and they crowded, clustered against him, brushed against his face like silk, dripped sanguine onto the stone floor of the cavern.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael forgot to draw breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He reached for Gerry first, shook him, but only succeeded in shaking a few petals loose to swarm for the ground. Muttering his name, muttering curses, he set him down again, hovered for a moment, and reached, fear-choked, for the flowers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael did not often close his eyes, but he shut them against this sight. It was worse than enough to feel Gerry’s skin tear, hear the rending sound again and again and then, for the moment before he stopped shaking, the drip of blood against the floor. Gerry had cried out, and that was the most awful sound of all sounds, and Michael opened his eyes at last and saw his skin in bloody fractals and wept.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did not have time to fret for long. Hushing him, murmuring half-panicked reassurances, Michael pressed his hands against Gerry’s arms, his shoulders, the base of his neck, his temples — anywhere the poppies had taken root — pressing the quiet that came with sleep into the damaged nerves and stitching them back together, months of rest and healing and the slow, steady rebuilding of flesh compounded into a minute. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was badly scarred, roots tattooed over his veins in ghost-white. Michael’s hands were heavy with his blood and the floor was stained, and both of their faces were wet with tears and Gerry shook and shook and did not stop. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Michael was saying when he could hear again. Over and over, a flood of apologies, thick with tears and the sickening thing in his throat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry shook his head finally, gasped once, twice for breath and it was the sweetest sound Michael had ever heard. “What happened?” he managed at last. “Michael. What — what —”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shh — hush, love, you — the poppies, my brother’s — you slept too long. Too deep. Does it hurt anymore?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a moment of quiet as Gerry shifted, tested the movement of his neck, the length of his arms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not … not badly. It aches?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael nodded, reached for him, gathered him into his arms. “Come here.” Burying a hand in Gerry’s hair he rocked slightly, still mumbling apologies, and it was a long time before he let go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The scars did not fade and the ache dulled only slightly over the next few days. Michael knew it would never vanish entirely and he made sure Gerry knew, poured out the truth while guilt for his carelessness writhed hot in his ribcage.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did not want to leave Gerry’s side. But he wanted very badly to speak with Death. Gerry refused to leave for the upper world, clung to Michael and, when Michael made for the exit with Gerry still gripping his hands, held fast to a stone pillar and would not relinquish his grasp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Gerry would not leave, and he could not stay if Sleep’s brother might still darken the stain he had left on the slumbering ground.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Michael was angry. It was a strange emotion on him, almost liquid, boiling rock or slow-bubbling water seeping from underground. Embers dying on the earth, coal-black, which would still burn if you stepped on them. A flame that danced deceptively low.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry watched him warily. He did not fear for himself; he could feel that there was nothing to be afraid of from Michael in the way his caresses had grown gentler still, brushing his face and taking care to avoid his scars. It was there in the way he kissed the white fractals along Gerry’s arms and up the curve of his neck, feather-light, slowly as though he could breathe softness and pigment back into the twisted skin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael was no threat to him, but to himself — Gerry worried about where all of that anger would go when it stopped simmering, or whether it might never leave the borders of Michael’s body and burn him away from the inside instead. He knew, too, that Michael’s body could not die, that Michael, divine, would live and live no matter how badly he hurt. Even when he managed to ignore the fear that that might be worse, it didn’t help. Nothing could change the fact that Michael </span>
  <em>
    <span>looked </span>
  </em>
  <span>fragile, soft gold and dust-pink and shadows eating at the corners of his face. No knowledge was sure enough to quell the instinct to defend him against anything that threatened.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael let him sleep only lightly, only in his arms. When Gerry sank to the floor now Michael followed, presented his shoulder for a pillow and his arms for blankets, and Gerry rested well in his embrace and the poppies were only soft petals and gently waving stems, and their roots, if they were there, remained hidden.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he saw Michael eyeing them nonetheless, and he was not surprised the morning he woke to Michael buzzing with his strange sleepy energy and instructing him to wait, to sit on a flat-topped standing stone away from the reaching flowers and remain there, safe as he could be, until Michael came home. Gerry watched Michael recede into the shadows at the edge of his domain, still illuminated faintly without light.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The hours — or what might have been hours in this place without time — passed slowly. Gerry watched the fireflies blink in and out, tried to catch the ones that strayed close to his perch. The air moved slowly here if it ever did, but it felt soft against the places where his scars stretched it tight and ached. His head, too, ached — it had, recently, not the throbbing pain of sleeplessness but something else, a pressure on the inside of his skull, the occasional stab. It was muffled, here; all pain felt duller in Sleep, but without Michael’s fingers tracing his brow, resting against his temples, some of the numbing fog lifted again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t matter. Gerry was no stranger to pain, and it was so little that he would not have noticed it months ago. He had gotten used to gentleness here, though, and he knew Mary would have said he’d gone soft, useless, weak. He didn’t think so. It surprised him, how easy it was to feel that; it didn’t bother him to be soft. So much that used to frighten or sting didn’t, and Michael made vulnerability a strength and tenderness a virtue. Gerry felt well and happy for the first time in his memory, nodding half-asleep on top of the standing stone in the dark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The poppies clustered closer, maybe, than they had, carmine blooms bobbing against the foot of the monolith, but Gerry neither noticed nor cared. He was content to wait, humming the fragments he remembered of one of Michael’s lullabyes into the listening shade.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then Michael was back, burning without fire, alight in shadow, and there was something different — something settling in the air around him. The water steam; the coal gone to ash; the candle spent. His hair was dishevelled. Gerry loved him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come down,” said Michael, offering a hand, and Gerry clambered from the top of the stone and into his arms. He was shaking; Gerry could feel it in the embrace, his arms trembling, his heartbeat, usually so slow, stuttering and quick against Gerry’s chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They pulled apart. “What’s wrong?” asked Gerry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael only looked at him. There were tears in his eyes, faintly, little spots of reflected light shining in his lashes. “Oh, my wanderer,” he murmured, raising a hand to skim Gerry’s cheek, and shook his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Michael, </span>
  <em>
    <span>what</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “Please, come sit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Back in their familiar place Michael sat facing Gerry, laid a palm against his forehead and for a moment closed his eyes. Gerry watched his face — saw him swallow — could hardly bear to see him looking like this, sad and scared and entirely without his usual unruffled calm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have … a sickness,” said Michael. “In your head. In your — your brain. A seed planted by my brother. It was meant to take you months ago. Being here, it’s … slowed it down, some, but he grows impatient. The poppies were … I thought I left you too long in sleep, and perhaps I did, but more than that it was his way of claiming you. Taking what should have been his.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry had never heard Michael’s voice like this. Thick with contempt, choked with tears. There was nothing of rest and nothing of quiet in that voice, and he hated whatever made Michael sound that way — hated it so that he almost forgot to fear the words he was speaking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I bargained with him,” said Michael. The curl of his lip, the flash in his eye and the way that strange electric tension was still drifting in the air around him like dust made Gerry certain that it had not been a bargain, but a threat. “He is … desirous. Spiteful. A brother will have his due, I suppose, or nothing at all.” Eyes closed, his hands too tight holding Gerry’s. A deep breath for lungs that would never need to count their exhalations, golden lungs that flooded with shade and were not made to collapse one day. Gerry could feel his own heartbeat, the slow aching swell of his chest, and refused to count. “He will give you up,” said Michael at last. “But only forever.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A long, uncertain silence. The air did not move. They breathed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So —” said Gerry, not sure what he had been offered or told.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You will live,” said Michael, and his voice shook, “forever, if you wish. With me, or without. My … services are the closest you will ever come to a death. Or you will be dead by tomorrow.” Gerry watched the tears spill over, heard Michael choke on a desperate gasp. He turned his golden head, raised a hand against his face and Gerry could only see, could not move to help him as he fought to collect himself, because Gerry had gone still and numb and silent.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So</span>
  </em>
  <span>—. That was it, then. The certainty of the sentence settled heavy between Gerry’s ribs. Die in a day or not at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did not want to die. Even in Mary’s clutches, at the brightest bloodiest hour between sleep and pain, he had not wished to die. But he had always </span>
  <em>
    <span>intended</span>
  </em>
  <span> to — someday, when he was a creature of many, many years and the same old candle that burned for everyone melted down, at last, for him, he had known and accepted that he would die. There was a comfort and a curiosity to it, really: the knowledge that there was rest at the end of a life that had always seemed stitched with trials, and the wonder of what that rest might be, whether the stories were true. It was not a comfort he craved nor a certainty he sought — life was too full and vivid not to cling to while it lasted — but the blankness at the end of sight was a friend to be waited for, a promise made patiently and without threat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To exist forever had never been something he had looked on kindly — it had scarcely been something he had thought of. But to die young — the genuine threat laid stark and sudden before him that </span>
  <em>
    <span>he would live no longer than another day </span>
  </em>
  <span>— had always been something he had loathed. Gerry was born in blood and raised in a fog that burned his skin and to die young would be to give in to the torments of his mother, and worse, never to see the end of them. If nothing else, he had made himself into a hopeful person, stuffed it into his heart night after sleepless night that there would be an end to Mary’s abuses and he would see it, because he had to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now? With the freedom he had only half-believed in in hand, in the softness of Michael’s skin and the smooth floor of the cavern and the fireflies that danced on the periphery of this place that felt, truthfully, like a home? More than ever, now, he wanted to live. He wanted to drink every last moment from the air here, breathe in happiness and exhale the harsher memories. The river he had begged for once — it seemed long ago, now — had been unnecessary after all, because comfort was, very slowly, becoming easier than recollection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was no longer living for spite. He was living for goodness, and softness, for himself and for love, and he did not want to stop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did not want to stop. Michael looked back at him, finally, tears wiped from his face, stoic calm in his features again. “You do not have to say yes,” he whispered, but Gerry reached for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” he breathed, taking Michael’s hands in his, and then he was crying, wracked so deeply with weeping that he doubled over, pressed his forehead against their clasped hands. He said it again, quieter, a whisper. He would live. He would exist forever in this world built out of sleep, and Sleep would hold him close and he would be happy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was much, and also nothing, to fear.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Gerry lay with his head in Michael’s lap and it was good to be immersed in darkness like this, the air bruised midnight blue and purple, heavy with sleep. Shadows gathered in the corners and clung to Michael’s voice as he hummed, trailed over Gerry’s skin after the paths of his fingers. Soft, hazy through the slumbrous curtain golden lights danced — night-lights, fireflies, the moon sinking hot and orange over the horizon. Michael hummed a song and touched his hair and his eyes almost fluttered closed, and poppies danced in bloodred smudges against the dark. Softly, softly this world moved — slow like the night might drag on forever, and maybe it would here. Michael’s fingers brushed across his brow and he felt his face relax, caught a last glimpse of the bob-headed poppies receding into a darker red, merging with the shadows. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael was whispering something. Something like </span>
  <em>
    <span>shh, hush now, quiet one,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and maybe he was calling him </span>
  <em>
    <span>gentle </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>lovely </span>
  </em>
  <span>and </span>
  <em>
    <span>sweet</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and maybe he was promising things Gerry had thought were unattainable, warm things like safety and love and a home. Gerry didn’t know. He didn’t care. It was dark, velvet-black where Michael touched his eyelids, fingers soft with sleep. It was dark, and he felt cradled and adored, and the poppies were brushing his cheeks and Michael’s humming was in his ear and then — then, finally, he was asleep. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael, he was beginning to realize, did not sleep. He looked perpetually as if he had just woken, and his movements were slow and heavy, but he always sang Gerry to sleep and was still singing when he woke. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He watched Michael when he blinked awake, his smile and the unfocused drift of his eyes, casting half-lidded over his domain before settling with a degree more certainty on Gerry, fully awake now in his lap. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello,” said Michael, who did not bother with </span>
  <em>
    <span>good morning </span>
  </em>
  <span>in this place that had no time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi,” said Gerry, and heard his voice still scratchy with dreams. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael helped him sit, kissed his eyes, and he felt some of the lingering heaviness lift. “Did you sleep well?” He always asked — checking in on his work, or an expression of affection, or both. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Always,” murmured Gerry, because it was true and because it meant he got to watch Michael’s face light up in the quiet way it did, a candle flame growing steadily brighter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so the day, such as it was, wore on, and Gerry wandered from Michael’s embrace out through the cavern, caught at fireflies just because he could, and brought them back to show to Michael before they flew away again all in a rush. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael laughed like rainfall on stones, white noise, and Gerry came back to the shadows when he grew tired again and pressed close, seeking warmth and quiet and sleep. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Michael began to sing, he remembered all at once what he’d meant to ask. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Michael?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael cut himself off abruptly, looked down and brushed a strand of hair from his brow. “Yes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you sleep?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael laughed. “I </span>
  <em>
    <span>am</span>
  </em>
  <span> Sleep, beloved.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But do you </span>
  <em>
    <span>sleep</span>
  </em>
  <span>, yourself? Close your eyes and — and lie down and … sleep?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shook his head. “I sing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Gerry sat up and took Michael’s face in his hands. “Lie down,” he said. “I’ll help you.” For Michael, who held him and soothed him into sleep after gentle sleep in his arms, for Michael who, as he said, </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> Sleep, not to know how to lie and close his eyes and rest, was almost alarming. It felt wrong. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael looked faintly bemused but indulged him, let Gerry pull him down to the floor and curl up. Heads pillowed in poppies, facing each other. Gerry pressed his forehead to Michael’s and let his eyes flutter closed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Close your eyes,” he mumbled. “Relax.” He felt Michael shift, drape an arm idly over his waist. It was a comforting weight and Gerry felt the tension drain from his own body under it. He raised a hand to his lover’s face, brushed his knuckles over his cheek, slow and deliberate. A hum, contented and barely audible, and Michael settled into the touch, smiling against Gerry’s fingers. “Shh, darling. Go to sleep,” whispered Gerry, still caressing his cheek, a soft repetitive motion as he felt Michael’s breathing even out, all his perpetual stillness growing even steadier, until slumber took them both without dreams.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>in which hypnos doesn't hate gerry even a little bit. you have three guesses which friend is responsible for this fic existing.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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